A Coalition of Queer Classicists and Allies
Call
for Papers: One
Hundred and Twenty Years of Homosexuality
LCC Panel, American
Philological Association: Anaheim, January 6-9, 2010
Organizers: Ruby Blondell (blondell@u.washington.edu) and Kirk Ormand
(Kirk.Ormand@oberlin.edu)
The APA/AIA meeting in January 2010 will mark the twentieth anniversary
of the Lambda Classical Caucus (founded at the APA in December 1989).
This year will also mark the twentieth anniversary of a pair of enormously
influential books: David Halperin's One Hundred Years of Homosexuality
and Jack Winkler's Constraints of Desire. Published in the same
year, in the same series (Routledge's New Ancient World), and
often reviewed together, these two books introduced many classicists to
queer theory for the first time and revolutionized the field of queer
classics. If that were not enough, 1990 likewise saw the publication by
Princeton of Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience
in the Ancient Greek World, edited by Halperin, Winkler, and Froma
Zeitlin. David Halperin was also--not coincidentally--the founder of the
Lambda Classical Caucus (click here for our history).
This seems a good moment, then, to celebrate what we have achieved--both
as an organization and as an intellectual movement--over the past 20 years,
and to look forward to what we may achieve in the next 20, by asking where
we have come from, what we have accomplished, and what still remains to
be done. While celebrating the past, and the path that brought us here,
we also want to consider where we stand now, and how best to go forward.
Which methodological tools are still proving useful, which need to be
reassessed or sharpened, and which have had their day? What avenues of
inquiry, theoretical models, or forms of evidence, have been overlooked
or come into recent prominence? How have social and political developments,
within or beyond the academy, reconfigured the world of queer classics,
its constraints or opportunities, since 1990?
While we are especially interested in the methods and concerns of Halperin
and Winkler (comparative anthropology, the application of queer theory
to classics, Foucault's formulation of "sexuality" as a peculiarly
modern form of knowledge, the articulation of pre-modern sexual identities),
and their influence upon the field, we are open to submissions exploring
any aspect of the current state and future directions of queer classics.
Abstracts might address such topics as our understanding of "active"
and "passive" roles in Greece and Rome, ancient notions of sexual
subjectivity, categories of sexual behavior, shame and honor, the practice
of paederasty, the intersection(s) of gender and sexual identity, questions
of evidence, and/or the periodicity of particular sexual categories, values,
or identities. In keeping with Lambda traditions, we welcome submissions
that deal with material culture as well as those focussing on texts and/or
other forms of evidence.
Abstracts should be sent as Word attachments to Joy Connolly (joyc@nyu.edu)
by February 5, 2009. (Do not send them to the organizers.)
Personal identifying information should not appear on the abstract itself.
Abstracts should be no more than one page and should follow the instructions
for individual abstracts on p. 6 of the APA
Program Guide in the 2007 newsletter.